Norfolk mystery's day in court

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Crown counsel Graham Rhead, who is assisting the coroner.Picture:Fiona-Lee Quimby

Two years after Janelle Patton's battered body was found, answers are still proving elusive. Candace Sutton reports from Norfolk Island.

Since the rainy Sunday two years ago when someone dumped Janelle Patton's battered and bloody body at a grassy lookout over one of their northern bays, Norfolk Islanders have wanted action.

An arrest of the killer, a trial and a conviction and the islanders could move on from Norfolk's first murder in 153 years.

After all, the police had the murderer's name - on a list of 680 tourists and 1778 locals on the island the day Ms Patton, 29, struggled mightily but failed to resist a rain of blows and a knife attack. Tomorrow, 27 months after the Sydney woman's death delivered the tourist haven a reminder of its dark convict past, the locals will get their action.

Chief investigating detective Bob Peters, will step into a 19th-century courtroom and do the equivalent of rolling a grenade up a church aisle.

In a 220-page report to a three-day inquest, Sergeant Peters will name 10 "persons of interest" to the police. The list will include Ms Patton's former boyfriends during her 21/2 years as a temporary resident managing restaurants and working in tourism.

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Among them are three members of the island's famous families, descendants of the HMS Bounty crew led by Fletcher Christian into modern history's most famous naval mutiny. Their names have fuelled the island rumour mill.

As islander Steven Robertson says: "Australia has AFL, we have gossip."

But uttered officially for the first time in a courtroom, the list will cause a stir among the islanders, whose historical undercurrents are little understood by outsiders.

The inquest will be held in an 1832 sandstone military barracks hung with portraits of King George VI, Queen Victoria and Queen Mary. The building dates from the island's second convict settlement, when it was "a place of extremist punishment, short of death".

Norfolk's first post-convict-era murder inquest is proceeding at a busy time for tourists and locals on the five kilometre by eight kilometre island, which lies 1600 kilometres north-east of Sydney. The hearing is sandwiched between a country music festival and Bounty Day - when local families celebrate the arrival of their forebears from Pitcairn Island, on June 8, 1790.

Norfolk Island chief magistrate Ron Cahill will act as coroner, with Norfolk Crown counsel Graham Rhead assisting, Ms Patton's parents - Ron and Carolyn - at the bar table, and six witnesses to give testimony before a public gallery and a phalanx of media.

Janelle Patton on March 30, 2002, the day before she died.

Sergeant Peters is the "softly softly" federal police officer whose 17 low-key investigative trips to Norfolk have earned him the scorn of some islanders.

He believes his statement will put to rest the rumours. "The community needs to know what has happened so far and where things are going, although it's not going to bring Janelle Patton back," he said.

Mr Rhead, a former Brisbane barrister and Hong Kong prosecutor, is hoping the uncertainty caused by naming people of interest will draw people forward.

"It will cause some grief and stir it up," he said. "It was a pretty vicious murder and I hope those details will encourage people to speak up."

The locals are famously defensive, secretive and resentful of intrusion. Nevertheless, as suspicion lingers, they question why police did not jump in, jackboots and all.

The victim was found on a Sunday afternoon wrapped in plastic at Cockpit Reserve, when she might easily have disappeared forever off a sheer island cliff. Her body was slashed with knife wounds and she had suffered broken bones in a fierce struggle.

Police chartered a plane to fly in a coroner and crime scene examiners, but night on the island, where there was only one street light, had utterly enveloped the scene.

"Why didn't they have a whole planeload of police here?" asked Candice Nobbs. "They allowed the rescue team to go down to Cockpit Reserve and walk all over it?"

Laurie "Bucket" Quintal, who ended a six-month relationship with Ms Patton two months before her murder, was one of the first to voluntarily submit to fingerprinting when the island's Legislative Assembly passed legislation to enhance the police inquiry.

The Pitcairner families - the Christians, Buffets, Quintals, Adamses, McCoys, Nobbs and Evanses - came forward, although only two-thirds of the island did.

Mr Quintal, like another former boyfriend, Steve Borg, noted Ms Patton was enduring considerable mental stress before her murder. He had an argument in the RSL Club with another man, whose name is on Sergeant Peters' list.

"I've told the police. I've always been co-operative, but it's frustrating," Mr Quintal said. "When I broke off the relationship with Janelle it was amicable. I still miss her.

"She was a good girl, a normal, healthy, young Australian woman. She had a big future."

One local mused about whether Ms Patton's killer would ever be found. "She ventured into the deep waters of Norfolk and perhaps she didn't know what lines she was crossing over," he said. "We're talking about more than 200 years of history here."